Things came to a head on Dec. 7, when Flamm told Warner the board had voted not to ratify him. Bakhit offered Warner $60,000 for his voluntary resignation and a confidentiality agreement that included a nondisclosure agreement clause, an offer Warner eventually refused, in part so he could finish out the school year. Though Flamm didn’t provide rationale for the board’s decision, Bakhit told Warner it was due to the “tone and tenor” of his social media posts.
“The fit isn’t because of your theology, the fit is more about … how you’ve come across in the past, and the concern, or the confidence that it wouldn’t happen again in the future,” Bakhit said in a recording obtained by RNS.
Meanwhile, many Grace College employees said they felt in the dark about Warner’s departure.
“It feels like it’s only a matter of time before I or anyone else cross an invisible line we didn’t know was there, and are determined to not be ‘missionally aligned,’” one Grace College employee told RNS.
Cliff Staton, director of Grace College’s school of arts and sciences partnership programs, said he wondered, if Warner didn’t fit at Grace College, did he?
“In a low-trust culture, you start thinking, I must be at risk too,” said Staton. “That was pervasive across faculty. Especially because there was no definitive language around the ‘why.’”
In the spring, students tried to organize a petition and a protest vouching for Warner but were unable to secure the administration’s approval. Students are disappointed in Grace for not saying anything publicly about the situation and “caving to outside pressure,” one student told RNS.
As Christian colleges vie for a dwindling number of incoming students, many are struggling to navigate the chasm between the convictions of conservative stakeholders and those of their more theologically, politically and racially diverse faculty and student bodies. In many cases, precarious finances have led schools to prioritize the former. Last year, English professors at Taylor University and Palm Beach Atlantic University were dismissed after receiving alumni, donor and parental criticism for their teachings on racial justice, though both had been teaching on that topic for over a decade.
Matthew Bonzo, who has taught philosophy at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for 26 years, told RNS he was pushed out after refusing to sign an oath of loyalty committing unwavering support to the president and his policies. Even after pushback led to the oath being dropped, Bonzo said he was notified that his position was being eliminated.
Bonzo told RNS he’s seeing many Christian colleges attempt to shield students from conversations about race and gender due to fear of undermining students’ faith.
“The thing that strikes me is the willingness of boards and administration to kind of alter the process to achieve the end that they want,” Bonzo told RNS. “At the very moment when Christian higher ed could be helping to navigate difficult cultural moments, we’ve been sidelined by these kinds of controversies.”
RNS independently confirmed that over 100 employees have departed Cornerstone since the arrival of the current president in 2021. In an email to RNS, the vice president for enrollment said the school has had a strong retention rate of about 81% for faculty and staff and has seen a slight increase in enrollment since last year.
At Grace College, those demanding Warner’s removal prevailed. In January, Warner filed a faculty grievance charging Flamm and Bakhit with alleged violations of college policy, but per the college bylaws, the president is the final arbiter of faculty grievances, and Flamm did not find that he or Bakhit had misstepped. Warner also submitted a board appeal requesting that a third party hear his case, but instead, the board affirmed Flamm’s ruling on the grievance.
“Even in all the complexity and hardship of this experience, at all points, he has been on team Grace,” Warner’s pastor, the Rev. Emily Cash, said of him. “His intention was never to show up at Grace to stir the pot, but to love students and engage them in the kind of learning he himself was delighted by. … He wanted, truly, to be at Grace, and for Grace to be a place of grace.”
This article originally appeared here.
